You might not see many new AAA titles in 2024, but these indies are ready to play now

Two things can be true at the same time.

One: We’re halfway through 2024 and the AAA video game industry hasn’t had a single new, mainstream breakout hit. More damning: If we look at the months ahead, the biggest-budget release of this year may be an expansion to the biggest game of 2022. For folks who’ve spent decades filling their weekends with blockbuster games from name-brand publishers like EA and Activision, 2024 may feel like a wash.

I suppose I could spend the next thousand words explaining the shortsighted failings of video game executives who steered well-intentioned productions into fickle trends that would fade long before a game’s release. But today, I want to do something a bit different. Rather than bemoan poor business decisions, I’d like to celebrate the abundance of creative decisions outside AAA. Which brings us to…

Two: We’re living in an unprecedented moment of video game abundance. You just need to know where to look. (And you should probably consider a desktop PC or a Steam Deck.)

In May alone, we saw the release of 12 games that were at minimum good, mostly great, and in a couple of cases, earned spots on Polygon team members’ unwritten greatest-games-of-all-time lists. This weekend, as you take in the AAA pageantry of Summer Game Fest, watching countless trailers for games that won’t be available for months or even years, I urge you to try one of these delights. All of which, I remind you, are available right now!

To help you select the right fit, I’ve written a little elevator pitch for each option.

12 incredible new games to play right now

Selaco: A micro-indie studio built a new, narrative-rich sci-fi universe that blends Half-Life and System Shock without skimping on tight, brutal gunplay. And they constructed this magnificent Frankenstein’s monster on the ultra-upgraded skeleton of the tools that powered Doom.

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip: What if Double Fine (the creators of the Psychonauts and Monkey Island series) made a spiritual sequel to the PS2-era cult classic The Simpsons: Hit & Run?

1000xResist: Many critics have compared this narrative adventure to 13 Sentinels and Nier: Automata. I adore those games, but 1000xResist has more in common with sci-fi literature, particularly the works of Ted Chiang. Where 13 Sentinels explored the tropes and history of the sci-fi genre and Nier: Automata dug into the wavy line between gods, humans, and machines, 1000xResist asks something more individual: what society would make of a teenage girl with immunity to a fatal pandemic — not just in the short term but the very, very, very long term. Unlike with The Last of Us, the answer doesn’t involve killing every character you meet.

Devil Blade Reboot: If you have enough imagination to buy into the thrills of an old-school pixelated shoot-’em-up (not everybody does!) then congratulations: You’ve just discovered the most high-octane action video game of 2024. Name any other game that lets you pilot a “not an X-Wing” and obliterate a “not a Star Destroyer” one colossal chunk of spacecraft at a time.

The Rogue Prince of Persia: For years, the team at Evil Empire expanded upon Dead Cells with its many decadent updates. With The Rogue Prince of Persia, they had the opportunity to build their own thing from the ground up — incorporating lessons learned from their time on the iconic indie. (Weirdly, this isn’t the only exciting Prince of Persia game released this year. Words I never thought would be written without fear of humiliation.)

Arctic Eggs: A first-person shooter but instead of a gun you have a frying pan, and instead of shooting people in the face, you make them eggs. Arctic Eggs looks like a PS1 horror and plays like a WarioWare minigame.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes: I am neither smart enough nor patient enough to appreciate this game. But people smarter and more patient than me adore the puzzle adventure that requires its players to take copious notes in a physical notebook.

Crow Country: Crow Country has been compared to the original Resident Evil, a horror throwback to the days of low-polygon models and cheeky environmental puzzles. It is that, to be clear. It’s also a loving, playable homage to the video game magazines of the ’90s. The aesthetic is both grimy and blurry, resembling the video game screenshots of that era — a very specific look. Back then, a moment on a TV screen would be captured by a photo, then digitized into a print layout, and lastly printed, each step degrading the original image’s quality in a unique (and now nostalgic) way. The game’s creators also stuffed the world with tips-and-tricks pages, like the guides that used to be found in the back of long-dead mags like GamePro and Nintendo Power.

Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago: Do you miss the days of Tamagotchi? Yolk Heroes reimagines the “virtual pet” genre through the lens of idle games — those compulsion-nurturing time sucks mostly played on smartphones. Unlike its more nefarious contemporaries, Yolk Heroes includes a plethora of options to modify the game so it will take as much or little time as you feel comfortable with.

Indika: A nun who may or may not have the devil in her head goes on a road trip with a mysterious man who may or may not have been divinely blessed in alternate-history 18th-century Russia. Is that not enough? The game is part of a growing movement to change what makes a game cinematic.

Animal Well: Again, I tell you that I am neither smart enough or patient enough to appreciate this game. But my colleagues (and practically every other game critic) adore this game. A potential GOTY contender, they say. A strike against my tastes, they say. I’ll never be forgiven for watching the ending on YouTube rather than solving the puzzle on my own, they say.

Hades 2: This feels like cheating. But this is a game made by a small independent studio. And it is awesome. And it was released in May. Those are the metrics for this exercise! I can’t leave it off the list just because its predecessor happened to win Polygon’s Game of the Year in 2020.

May 2024 should be remembered as one of the greatest months of all time for smaller games from smaller studios, and yet, it might not be. Because this, perhaps, hints at a new normal. In April, we got Minishoot Adventures, Another Crab’s Treasure, Felvidek, Snufkin, Maniac, Harold Halibut, and Children of the Sun. Before that, we got games as small as Balatro and large as Palworld.

More people are making more games than at any point in history. And for these smaller teams, game development is getting easier and cheaper, at the exact moment it’s becoming more difficult and expensive for their AAA peers.

The video game industry is changing. How it will shake out will take time to see. There is, however, hope to be found in a month like May, and a year like 2024, when so many artists put so much greatness into the world. Sometimes it’s a little difficult to notice, without big PR teams and expensive ad campaigns, but we’re living in a time of plenty.